ISO29119

At CAST 2014James Christie gave a presentation called: “Standards – Promoting quality or restricting competition?“. James argued that standards are produced by bodies with a commercial interest in seeing them adopted. He analysed the economic forces behind the creation of standards. They should be viewed as optional methods that companies can buy or reject as they see fit. Selling them as standards distorts the market by creating the impression amongst senior managers, lawyers and regulators that there is no valid, responsible alternative. James explained why the auditors and compliance professions are not lined up on the side of the standards lobby. Testers must speak out following the Healthcare.gov website fiasco. This debate is not an academic contest between rival schools of thought. It’s a commercial struggle, and James provided compelling arguments against standards.

During open season Karen Johnson showed a red card and suggested that people should DO something. She argued since it was the start of the conference and many of the attendees seemed to be against certifications and standards that perhaps they could “do something” that would make an impact.

(*) Update 24/9/2019: The ISST was founded to advocate for more common sense in testing (see founding message here, but doesn’t exist anymore. The website http://www.commonsensetesting.org/ is bought by another agent and has unrelated stuff on it now). Also: for a while there was a website http://professionaltestersmanifesto.org/ but this website is gone too. You can find the manifesto, which I think is still important, here: professional Tester’s manifesto.

This kicked off a whole lot of blog posts from testers around the world. This page shows a collection of all these blog posts. Please let me know if I missed one.